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Comment by compumike | Hacker News Reader

(1) Looks cool: it looks modern and attractive. (2) ROI-positive: many owners report that the device pays for itself with reduced energy consumption within a year or two. (Maybe not in California with fairly moderate HVAC energy consumption, but lots of other climates spend a lot more.)

Not many products can claim to be ROI-positive to the consumer. When the payback period is short enough, that's pretty exciting for the analytical part of consumer thinking. Paired with the "looks good on my wall" and the "burns less fossil fuels" triggers on the emotional side, that's pretty appealing to a bunch of people. (Same basic feelings but much cheaper than buying a Tesla.)

No excuse for being buggy though.

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Maybe it is a failure of imagination, but I don't get how nest can be more efficient than manual control. Cold? Switch the heating on. Hot? Switching the heating off. Why'd you need a learning algorithm for that?

The website says stuff like

> The babysitter calls to say she picked up the kids from soccer and they’re heading home. You adjust the temperature from your phone so they’ll be cozy.

..which is a first-world problem if I've ever heard one. Just wear an extra layer for 10 minutes while the heating warms up. Jeez.

Well, to be honest, a lot of things we can't live without now (like having clean and hot water in the tap) were "first-world" problems only few decades ago. The progress of civilization is measured in the amount of things we don't have to care about anymore.

The point is to spend very little energy while no one is home, but converge the house back to a comfortable temperature by the time someone gets home. You are not present to actuate manual controls when you're not home. Programmable thermostats have been doing this with schedules for decades, but they tend to have shitty UIs and not every household runs on a regular schedule.

>for 10 minutes

Whenever we'd come back from vacation, it would take my house at least 3-4 hours to move from ~40 to ~70. Our house was actually pretty small for the neighborhood. Being able to kick the heating back on from a few hours away in the car would have been amazing. I think you have a hilariously overpowered furnace, a tiny space relative to Midwestern suburbia, or an exceptionally temperate climate.

This is a highly unusual situation (not to mention dangerous in the winter) to turn off your heat. Certainly not something you would worry about when trying to make a babysitter cozy.

Not all the way off, but there is a wide margin between comfortable and safe where it is generally cost-effective to let the temperature rest when you are not home.

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